Qui Desiderat Pacem...
by NorthernStar
Summary: Sequel to "In Love and War." Set post-seventh season. Bashir discovers Travin is still alive...
1. One - From the Ashes...

Disclaimer: Star Trek and its characters are the property of Paramount

Disclaimer: Star Trek and its characters are the property of Paramount. No infringement is intended nor has any money been made. The story and all other characters are mine, however.

Rating: PG-13

Notes: This is the sequel to "In Love and War." It is set 6 months after the events in "In Love…" and approximately 3 months after the finale "What You Leave Behind."

****

Qui Desiderat Pacem…

By

NorthernStar

****

Six months later…

****

Prologue: Quiet Reflection.

The bare branches rustled above him, dancing in the sunlight. The shadows dappled the green grass around him and played on the contours of his face. A tear twinkled in the morning light and he shivered as the December wind bit into him.

It was a simple grave. White marble with black Islamic leaf to speak the name of the departed. 

It didn't seem real. He was standing at his father's grave.

Richard was dead. 

The funeral had been quick and dignified. His father, having shown no sense of heritage during his life, had requested a traditional Muslim burial and had been laid to rest less than 24 hours after death, as was the custom.

Having grown up thinking he knew his father, in death he had surprised him.

His father, Jadzia, Miles, Sisko, Odo…

Ella.

He'd lost so many people in so short a time. 

He glanced behind him, to the entrance of the cemetery, where Ezri stood waiting, allowing him some privacy. She waved and blew a kiss.

He'd gained so much.

He loved her deeply, far more than he'd thought possible. There was something so right about the two of them. It wasn't grand, or breathtaking but simple. They meant something, and that was that.

Another mourner, huddled in an overcoat, stood by a grave in the distance. 

He shivered; he'd given his own coat to Ezri and his fingers were starting to go numb. Time to go.

"Good bye, Dad." He murmured.

There was nothing else to say.

As he slipped an arm around Ezri, he glanced back, feeling like he'd missed something. She laid a hand against his chest in sympathy.

"Julian?"

But the moment had passed. "Nothing."

****

Part One: From the Ashes

Ezri waved goodbye to the little figure in the turbo-lift with a slight smile. It was moments like this that made up for all the hard work being a counsellor. Ally Wells was laughing again. So different from 4 months ago when her father brought her to Ezri. There had been something so _bitter_ about her. The uncontrollable anger and grief of a child whose mother had been taken from her. Her dad had no words to explain to her why her mother had died, had left her, when everyone else's mother loved them enough to stay alive.

It had been her hardest case, and her most rewarding.

She returned to her office still smiling to herself, so wrapped up in herself that she'd walked straight up to her replicator before she realised that she wasn't alone.

She turned. "I'm sorry. Did you wish to make an appointment?"

The man sitting on huge sofa that was supposed to put people at ease was smiling at her. He was tall and well muscled with longish dark hair, which he pushed out of his eyes with a lean hand. 

"Appointment?" He paused, "yes, I do."

Ezri relaxed and realised she'd been tense. She picked up her duty Padd. "Well, I can't fit you in this week but I have a cancellation-"

"I was hoping to see you now."

"I'm sorry, I have another session in a few minutes." She sighed, "if it urgent, I can see you at the end of the day. My last session finishes at 2000 hours. If you came at 2015 we could talk." She punched the appointment into the Padd then looked up, "what's your name?"

He smiled. "You really are a very pretty girl."

Something in his voice made her tense up. "Um, thank you."

"And so kind…to see me at such short notice. I can see why Julian loves you so much."

"You know Julian?"

"Oh yes, we're old friends." He moved like lightening, crushing her in a vice like grip and covering her mouth with his hand. He whispered into her ear. "Perhaps he mentioned me, my name is Travin. Dale Travin." He chuckled as he saw the terror on her face. "I see by your eyes he has. I'm afraid you won't make your next appointment."

He touched the button on his collar and Dax felt the tingle of a transporter carry her away.

*****

Brin Tulla had lost her husband in the war. Just another name in a list so long it would take days to read. Another broken family. Dax had been a good friend though, listening quietly to her fears and anger, never passing any judgement for the things she'd admitted to doing to ease the loneliness. All she would say is that everyone dealt with grief differently and if being with someone else, laughing with them was helping her through the pain, then so be it.

She was looking forward to today's session, the counsellor had been on Earth recently and she'd missed their friendship. She walked straight in, Ezri was expecting her and the Trill prided herself on always having an open door.

The room was empty.

"Dax?" 

She frowned, Ezri had been late before that was true, but she always left a note. Something compelled her to touch her Comm badge. "Brin to Dax."

No answer.

"Computer, location of Lt. Dax?"

__

"Lt. Dax is not aboard the station."

Brin's hand clapped her Comm-badge. "Brin to Ops."

__

"Ops." 

"Sir, Lt. Dax is gone!"

******

Julian Bashir sat at the medical terminal updating his files now that half the senior staff had gone. He'd been putting it off, not wanting to admit to himself how much life had changed. But saying goodbye to his father…He'd finally excepted that nothing would ever be the same.

The image of his fathers grave rose unbidden in his mind and he almost shivered with remembered cold.

And then it clicked into place. The mourner. Something about the way he stood, the set of his shoulders was familiar.

It was Travin. He lived.

******

Kira Nerys was having a bad day. A really, really bad day. She'd been having a lot of them since Odo had left and she excepted them as part of the healing process. Something you just had to endure until the sun came out and life meant something again.

But none compared to this.

"I'm sorry, Admiral, but the Bajoran government doesn't believe anything will be gained by that." _There_, she thought, _I can be polite._

"And their objection will be duly noted, but Starfleet is still in command of Deep Space Nine."

"The Bajoran personnel on this station has learned a lot in the past seven years. I believe they can take over where the senior staff left off." She straightened her back in defiance. "As they have been doing for the past three months."

Admiral Ross sighed. "As it was discussed at the time, colonel, that was only a temporary arrangement until Starfleet recovered from the final battle and could assign new officers to DS9."

"The Bajoran government feels that the military has proven itself more than capable."

"I don't doubt it. However, new senior staff have been appointed and will be arriving-"

"Sir!"

Kira turned her attention to the ensign who had just run, uninvited, into Sisko', no…into her office. He looked about 10 and blushed when he realised what he'd done. His name was Joseph or something like that. All blonde curls and a pretty face.

"Ensign?"

"Its, ah, its Lt. Dax, sir. She's disappeared." 

******

Kira entered the infirmary. The engineering team had swept Ezri's office and found nothing, no transporter trace, no…no remains. That was the last place her Comm badge had been, and that was gone too. There was only one explanation she could come up with, and she didn't like it one little bit. She gasped as she almost barrelled into Bashir. The doctor looked shocked, far more than you'd expect from a man who'd nearly sent his commanding officer flying.

Had he heard? News travelled at the speed of light on the station, especially bad.

"If we could talk inside, doctor."

"Colonel, I…" he trailed off, noticing the tension in her voice. He followed her back into his office and looked at her with that polite expression she found particularly annoying.

"Have you had any recent contact with Section 31?"

"Travin!" Suddenly the polite face became one of pure hate. "I-I was going to Ops to tell you. I saw him on Earth, he's alive."

Kira felt the sick cold feeling she knew all to well. "And Dax? Did he see Dax?"

"She…she was with me." She could see by his face he knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway. "Why?"

"Because she's gone, doctor." 


	2. Two - Past Favours

Part Two: Past Favours  ****

Part Two: Past Favours 

There was a faint buzzing noise around her and the smell of roses. Earth roses. Ezri opened her eyes and winced as the harsh light of a spring morning burned into her pupils. 

The sky…

She was lying on…something…facing the sky. She was….on a planet? 

She moved her fingers and shifted her body, just to find out if it was possible to move. Then she wondered when the idea that maybe she _couldn't_ move came from. You didn't often wake up thinking that, did you?

"Good morning." 

She turned her head and saw a young man at her side. He looked vaguely familiar and her heart rate shot up, even if she saw no immediate danger, her body seemed to feel there was.

"Where…?" She looked around, and realised she wasn't outdoors at all. She wasn't even on a planet. She was in a biosphere. On a ship? 

Maybe.

"…Are you?" The man finished. "I think you've already guessed."

"A biosphere?"

"Not just any biosphere. Welcome to Section 31's little wonderland…Alice."

Ezri drew a sharp breath as his identity clicked into place. "Travin!"

******

"Calm down, doctor." Kira told him.

Bashir rounded on her, his face pale and drawn with worry. She flinched as his eyes met hers, the look of hate and coldness she saw there was one she had never seen from him before. She'd read the file on the Ella Brannon incident and the one part that stood out from all the rest was the depth to which Travin had cut Bashir. The doctor was not a man to hate easily; in fact she would have said he would not hate at all. But Travin had passed that.

"Is there anywhere he'd take her?"

"I don't know."

"Anyway we can contact 31?"

"I don't know."

"There must-"

"There isn't, Kira." He raged, "I don't know anything to do with 31. THEY come to me, I have no way of…" He flopped back against his desk. 

"Feel better?"

He shook his head.

"Look, I'll report Dax's disappearance to Starfleet, maybe 31 will get to hear about it."

"And how long will that take?"

"I don't know." She touched his shoulder. " We'll get her back, doctor. I promise."

******

Bashir looked at the hypo by the stand by his bed. He'd tossed and turned in an attempt to get to sleep by the combined worry of Ezri's disappearance and the unsettling feeling of her absence in their bed kept him wide awake. He never liked resorting to chemical means to get to sleep, but he needed to rest. Needed to be unconscious if 31 were going to pay him a visit.

But the hypo would probably render him so deeply asleep, that he wouldn't wake.

He sat up. Travin…He knew so little about the man, about his crimes against 31 and against Sloan. But Sloan had waged a very personal war against him and for someone like Sloan to be driven to that…

And he'd killed Ella.

For nights after, he'd been tortured with nightmares of the death, each one playing out subtly different. Sometimes he'd even save her only to wake to the reality, sometimes he'd die in her place and sometimes the precise moment of her brutal murder would repeat over and over until he forced himself to wake up, screaming her name and thrashing in the bed.

Travin had taken one love from him. And he swore he would not take another.

******

Kira opened her eyes. She sat up in bed, listening hard. Had she heard something? Then the soft shuffle sounded again. It was coming from the living area. Her heartbeat began to race as she remembered how 31 contacted Julian.

Always at night. Always while he slept.

And always the element of surprise…of control was in 31's favour.

She slipped out of bed and padded silently through her quarters, following the direction of the noise she'd heard. Faint star shine filtered through the huge windows casting shadows all around. Which shadow did not belong here?

And then she saw him. A tall man with honey coloured hair that flopped across his brow. He was sitting on the ledge by the window, patiently waiting for her.

"Major Kira?" He asked in a flat accent not too unlike Bashir's.

"I take it 31sent you?"

"Agent Ray Pierce." He smiled, but didn't answer her question. 

"Do you know where Travin is?"

"No. Dale is-was one of our best. If he doesn't want you to find him, you won't."

"But you know if he's got Dax?"

"The Trill? I believe so. Not all of us at 31 do, but they didn't know Travin quite so well."

"And you did?"

"We worked together. I admired him," he chuckled, "I didn't like him, but I admired him. Like I said, he's one of the best. Sloan underestimated him, I won't make that mistake."

"This is all very nice and cosy, but it's not going to find us Dax!"

"Yes," he agreed and stood up, "call the doctor, hand your station over to whoever can run it in your absence and meet me at the Chu' La station tomorrow."

"I can't just-"

But the agent touched a minute button on his collar and a dance of tiny lights took him away.

******

Kira carefully docked the Rio Grande in the Chu'La station's only bay. It was only a small supply station orbiting one of the smaller of Bajors moons. Kira had been here many times, mainly with the resistance. She'd hated it then and she still hated it.

Unlike DS9, which the Federation had turned from a Cardassian monstrosity to something Bajor could be proud of, the Chu'La station had received no such make over. Its very walls rang with the cries of the malnourished and over-worked Bajoran slaves who built it. 

Behind her, Bashir shuddered, "I didn't think places like this still existed."

"Because you're great and gloried Federation wouldn't allow it? I have news for you, doctor, if there's a need for places like this they exist. Chu'La is the only moon that's not on the designated trade routes. If you're mining down there, this is the only station with supplies for several parsecs."

They left the warm, clean surroundings of the Federation Runabout for the colder air of the shuttle bay. The environmental controls did not have any of the corrective systems of the runabout and the air lacked the right concentration of positive ions. Bashir even thought he detected a slight muskiness from the over recycled air. Kira scanned the area with her eyes but failed to see the man who had come into her quarters the night before. 

"He's not here." She said.

"Then we wait?"

"We wait. Come on, doctor, let's see if there's a bar here."

******

Travin brought her a tray of food shortly after she had blurted out his name. He had neither confirmed nor denied it, but she knew she was right. The meal he gave her was simple but well balanced. He obviously didn't have any intentions of starving her.

Well, no immediate intentions anyway.

Curiously, she found she had a voracious appetite, which even under normal circumstances was unusual, she wasn't a very big eater, but under these conditions, she was surprised she wanted to eat at all, let alone the amount she gobbled down.

He watched her while she eat and she wondered whether she ought to engage him in conversation. It was the proper procedure in these cases, get them talking, get them liking you, make it harder for them to end you life.

But she didn't sense, or at least the life experience of the Dax symbiont, didn't sense that that was his aim.

At least not yet, anyway.

"Why did you bring me here?" She asked.

He chuckled, "don't you know?"

******

Several hours passed and every minute grated on Bashir's nerves. And as a consequence, Bashir grated on Kira's. Her own impatience was bad enough; dealing with the doctors was something else. 

She sipped her drink and glanced at the doorway for the thousandth time.

Then with the sense that had served her so well as a terrorist, she felt someone behind her. She spun around, pulling her phaser, making Bashir jump.

And there was Pierce and another agent, wrapped in a cloak.

"Congratulations, Colonel." Pierce said. "If you were human and in Starfleet, 31 would be very interested in reflexes like that."

"You probably think that's a compliment. I don't."

"It is."

She didn't even bother hiding her disgust.

"Pierce!" Bashir said, recognising him and the agent nodded.

"It is good to see you again, doctor."

"Where's Ezri?" He demanded.

"We do not know…yet."

"Then why bother bringing us here?"

"So that you could meet my friend," he nodded to the cloaked agent at his side, "away from…more prying eyes, shall we say?"

The agent reached up with a thin, long fingered hand and pushed back the hood of the cloak. It was a young woman.

Bashir felt ice run through his veins at Pierce's next words. "This is Jennifer."

__

Travin's sister…


End file.
